In recent years, there have been many proposals to use hydrogen as a clean source of energy. For example, fuel cell automobiles that run on hydrogen as a fuel have been developed. Exhaust gas from hydrogen-powered fuel cells does not contain nitrogen oxides, particulate matters, carbon dioxide, and the like, which exhaust gas from internal-combustion engines contains. Thus, fuel cells draw attention as a clean source of power that is capable of suppressing environmental pollution and global warming.
However, hydrogen is large in volume while being stored, and therefore means for supplying hydrogen is of a problem in, for example, automobile fuel cells.
Patent Document 1 discloses a process of producing hydrogen by decomposing ammonia, etc. Patent Document 1 also describes an apparatus for producing hydrogen for use in a fuel cell having a decomposer that decomposes a hydrogen source composed of ammonia and/or hydrazine into nitrogen and hydrogen through a catalytic reaction, to supply the resultant hydrogen to the fuel cell. Further, Patent Document 2 discloses an apparatus and a process for producing hydrogen efficiently from ammonia, which is an improvement on the invention disclosed in Patent Document 1.
Meanwhile, miniaturizing the fuel cell per se is now in demand. Such a miniaturized fuel cell is intended for use as a substitute for AC-DC converters for rechargeable secondary batteries used in mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), digital cameras, laptop computers, and the like.